let's not give the game away
by high improbability
Summary: Katara and Zuko, counting down through the years. (Or, the Zutara soulmate AU. Kind of.)


please don't say you love me, 'cause i might not say it back / doesn't mean my heart's not skipping when you look at me like that

* * *

The day the black snow falls, her father's timer goes blank. She can tell by the way her father's men turn their faces away, how Sokka looks stricken like she has never seen him, and how a million different emotions flit across Hakoda's face before, finally, he bends down and takes Katara and Sokka in his arms like he's never ever _ever _going to let them go. That's when she knows what she has done – by running away, by going to her father, she has killed her mother.

"I'm sorry," she says to cold air, and finds that she means it.

"Don't be," says her father, his voice thick with emotion. "She died so you could _live_."

Katara thinks the world would be better off with her kind, beautiful mother than it would be with a lost, half-orphaned little girl who didn't even know how her powers worked.

That's when she realizes her father is crying, his tears falling squarely on Katara's head. "It's the goddamn Fire Nation," he mutters. "They will _pay_ for this." She looks over, sees his blank forearm, understands the weight the sight of it will carry for the rest of his life, and agrees with him.

Katara is six years old. It is the first time she has seen a man cry, and it is for love.

When her father leaves, there are bands wrapped around his wrists. He never speaks about his timer again.

(o)

Katara's own timer flashes dully against the thick coat sleeve. She has three more years, eight months, and seventeen days before she's due to meet her true love. Sokka has more than six years left on his, which annoys him to no end. "What if I'm not ready to meet my soulmate?" she says suddenly, pausing in the middle of her braid. "I'll only be fourteen then."

"You'll meet them when you're ready," says Sokka, turning his attention back to the spear he's making. "That's the point."

"What if they don't make me happy?"

"They're _supposed _to make you happy," Sokka says flatly. "They're your _soulmate_. It's kind of their job."

"You think mom was happy when she met dad?" Katara says, swinging her feet. Her fingers make their way to the edge of her braid.

Sokka stares at her like she's grown a second head. The subject of their parents lies between them, a topic both of them are too scared to touch for all that they play at being adults – of a father far away at war, a mother turned to ash in an urn in their grandmother's house, of wristbands where their father's timer used to be. "She must have been," he says reluctantly. "Right?" He thinks a little bit more – he can remember their mother far better than Katara can, can imagine more than soft hands and a loving smile. "Well, what matters is that she grew to be happy with him," he concludes. "And so will you."

Katara is eleven, and her brother's words do nothing to comfort her against the notion of the universe forcing her to love someone.

(o)

Katara is twelve when she first sees her grandmother's wrist, and her eyes widen in shock.

"You had a soulmate once, Gran-Gran?" she says, her eyes transfixed on the row of zeroes.

If Kanna is surprised at her granddaughter's question she doesn't show it, and instead smiles softly. "I did, my dear. Do, rather."

"But – your timer isn't blank! So he must be alive, but Grandfather is dead…" Katara trails off and bites her lip.

"I knew my soulmate loved me," Kanna says softly, petting her granddaughter's head. "Our timers had hardly gone off when we were engaged to be married. We were both sixteen."

"But you…" Katara can't stop staring. "And Dad…Why did you run away?"

Kanna takes Katara's wrist in hers and runs over fingers over the small numbers. _Two years, one month, thirteen days_. "I did not love him or what he expected of me," she says. "And so I ran away. And I met your grandfather." She touches Katara's cheek. "Katara, my darling – someone doesn't have to be your soulmate for you to love them."

(o)

Katara breaks the ice and finds a boy younger than she is, with wide gray eyes and a big smile. She runs to him and catches him before he can pass out, but not before his eyes widen in shock at the beeping sound they both hear.

(o)

They don't talk about it.

They convince the Southern Water Tribe that this boy – _Aang_, she has not quite gotten used to the way his name rolls off her tongue – is the Last Airbender, and the Avatar, and he has a _sky bison_ and is a hundred years old and a host of other impossible things, and Gran-Gran sets them off on a journey to save the world. "Be safe," she had told Sokka. "Love well," she had told Katara.

Not _quite_ the soulmate tale Katara had expected. She hasn't fully processed it, being soulmate to the _Avatar_.

But she's nothing if not pragmatic and calm, and so she pushes Aang and Sokka, mothers them, makes sure they're not screwing up. She teaches Aang how to call water to her fingertips as much as she can, although she's very, very aware she isn't much help by herself – they have to find a waterbending master, and soon, and she puts that next on her mental list of things to do.

They don't talk about it. Katara reasons Aang has enough on his plate without having to worry about her. "His entire people died," she whispers to Sokka at night, when they're under a million stars and Aang's snores resound over the dying campfire. "He's just a _kid_. He has to save the world. I can't – I couldn't possibly–"

Sokka shushes her. "It's okay, Katara. We have a world to save." For that, she's grateful.

But Katara catches him looking at her, sometimes, with something like longing in his eyes. Part of her wants to mention it, to compare the matching row of zeroes on their wrists, but the better part of her – the one who realizes that this is much bigger than them – shoves it back down. There would be time soon.

(o)

Jet makes her blood thrum when he looks at her, makes her breath catch when he wraps his hands around her waist, and for the first time in her life she wonders if this is what her grandmother meant.

Things go wrong before she can find out, and by the time it's over she can't stand to look at him, and can't look Aang, with his wide, searching eyes, in the face either.

(o)

Sokka loves and loses. Yue is everything he wants and yet she's everything he can't have, not when she's a princess, not when she's engaged to a man who won't love her, not when her wrist is blank – payment to the Moon Spirit for saving her life, she explains in a hushed voice under an infinite night sky – and his still has four years on the clock.

She sacrifices himself to save them all.

Sokka is desolate afterwards, even after Zhao dies, even after Pakku's voice breaks when he eyes Katara's necklace and shows her the row of zeroes on his wrist, his fingers trembling, even after he promises to take Aang and Katara on as pupils, even after they make plans to travel to the Earth Kingdom.

"Gran-Gran was right," he murmurs, and, quite uncharacteristically, she throws her arms around him and hugs him fiercely. It's hard to believe she's all he's got now. She thinks about her brother's future soulmate, and whether or not they'll ever measure up to Yue – or whether or not Sokka will ever allow himself to think otherwise.

Maybe it was time to talk to Aang.

(o)

After the lunar eclipse she knows Prince Zuko as someone inherently cowardly and evil, someone who'd use her heritage to taunt her and who'd willingly hop on his family's plans for world domination at the cost of everyone's expense. She relearns him in the caverns underneath Ba Sing Se, peels back his layers to find a scared boy with a heart larger than he'd like.

They talk for a long time – it's not like there's anything else to do in the catacombs – and it's longer and nicer than any conversation Katara has had recently. He tells her about his uncle, she tells him about her grandmother, they talk about their siblings and Aang and Ozai, they talk about Water Tribe festivals and Fire Nation nobility, and she's surprised to find that she doesn't hate him.

They talk about their mothers, and that's when Katara knows she trusts this boy, despite all he's done.

"My parents were soulmates," she admits. "I don't think Dad was ever the same after Mom–"

He puts a hand over hers. "I know," he says. There's a stagnant pause. "Father and Mother were – _are_ – not."

"I'm sorry," she says, even if she's not sure why.

"Don't," he replies, wringing his hands. He looks at her, as if debating whether or not to continue. "I saw my mother's wrist once," he says, his voice dropping to a low whisper. "Zeroes, but–"

"Slashed through," she murmurs. She had heard as much, of people who had loved and lost and succumbed to despair. They sit in silence for a while before she asks about his.

Zuko pulls back his sleeve to show her his timer: a row of zeroes to match hers. "It went off when I was _seven_," he explains. "For Mai."

"I assume she's more open to you than she is to me, then," Katara snarks, smiling a little.

"Not particularly." Zuko gives her one of his half-smiles. "I dunno. It's…weird. She kind of just followed Azula everywhere. Even now. And I – I don't really agree with that right now." He glances at her wrist. "And you?"

"Aang," she says, and it sounds heavy even to her own ears. If Zuko notices, he doesn't show it. "But I – we haven't really acted on it. Haven't even _talked_. It's weird, too. He's so _young_, and he has so much on his shoulders – I don't want to add to that. He's not ready."

Zuko draws his knees up to his chin. "Sounds more like you're not ready, either."

She groans. The truth of it makes her miserable. "I just – I just don't want to feel like I have to love someone because it's written in the stars, y'know?"

He surprises her. "I know how you feel."

Before she can help it, a smile finds its way onto her face.

This is why, when everybody bursts into the catacombs, she can't help but send him pleading, despondent glances. When they're squared off against each other, ice against fire, she yells at him until her throat is raw – "I thought you had changed!"

"I have changed." It's not a lie, but it's not true either. It's a split-second decision. He chooses Azula. Katara tries not to let the disappointment show too much.

Azula shoots lightning and Aang falls from crystal, and Katara cries until her eyes run out of tears.

(o)

When Aang wakes up she's so relieved to see him again that she peppers his face with kisses. His eyes grow wide and his body tenses, but she pulls back and his face is smiling. _She may grow to love him yet_, she thinks, when the music swells and he dips her low in the cave, the flush staining his pale skin. She thinks it again when they are separated from the others in the tunnels, when he holds baby Hope in his arms, when Sokka forges a sword and Aang leaps instantly to help him, when he intervenes between her and Toph, when Hama is carted away and she flinches from Aang's touch for fear she might control him and he looks like he's been punched.

She sees her father again for the first time in over a year. He cries and hugs her and Sokka. The bands around his wrist are gone, but instead there's a perfect row of zeroes inked over his skin. Katara doesn't say anything, just smiles at him, and she knows he understands.

When the invasion fails and their friends are captured, Aang yells into the night in frustration and tears. It's the worst she's ever seen him, and it breaks her heart. She puts her hand on his shoulder, and it relaxes instantly. _He is so old, but so young_.

Then Zuko comes back, and her heart leaps with fury and betrayal. He looks at her like he's sorry, but she won't have any of it. Aang notices the tension, but knows better than to intervene.

"You don't have to be so hard on him, y'know," Sokka tells her. "He's doing his best."

"He'll have to try harder," she says, trying not to be embarrassed at how her voice rises in pitch.

"Why're you so unwilling, lil sis?"

"I _trusted_ him," she repeats stubbornly, but she knows it's more than that.

Sokka frowns disapprovingly, and the sight is so comically familiar that it makes her grin. "Y'know I'll never hate him more than I hate you, right?" she says to break the ice.

"Very funny, Katara," he says, but his voice is warm. She thinks of the numbers still ticking down on his wrist, of Suki whom she knows he loves but is holding out on, and of his soulmate, somewhere, wondering where he is. Whoever they were, they would be amazed when they met him.

(o)

It has just only a week since Zuko joins up with them in the Fire Nation's lovely, secret forests and she is the only one who still looks at him with a wary eye.

"I would follow Aang to the _ends_ of the Earth," she declares, looking him straight in the eye.

"I don't doubt it." Zuko sounds sad, almost, and – wistful?

"You don't get to criticize me," she adds spitefully. "You don't have the _right_."

"I know."

He does. This is why he's so ready to help her onto Appa, to take out her mother's murderers with her, and to hold her in his arms when she's done. _I am ready to forgive you_, she says, and she feels him smile into her shoulder. The sensation warms her heart.

When she breaks free, she looks at him. The sunset light softens his aristocratic features, making him look freer, younger. His eyes are shining. "I'm sorry," she adds.

Zuko's eyes widen. "For _what_?" he sputters, his patrician grace lost in shock. "Katara, I–"

Later, she'll question why she did it, but there is so much grief and shock and hurt in her heart then that it had made sense at the time. She leans upward and brushes his hair away from his forehead, her eyes never leaving his. Then they close and her lips find his, soft and gentle. Zuko stiffens, but leans forward. Her heart feels twisted and turned every which way. She feels dizzy on dreams, thinking of her grandmother and Aang and Mai.

He pulls away. There are tears in her eyes. Katara puts her head against his chest, listens to the thumping of his heart. Almost instinctively, his arms wrap around her, bringing her closer.

"Aang," she says. "Mai." Aang, who is meant for her, and whom she may love. Mai, who is meant for Zuko, and whom he may love.

"I know." He kisses the top of her head, and it's bittersweet. "There will be time," he murmurs, his thumb tracing circles onto her skin.

(o)

As it turns out, there is no time. Everything happens too fast.

Toph, Sokka, and Suki take down a fleet. The White Lotus take back a city. Aang defeats Ozai in a furious battle she only hears of later, and she grins blindly with pride.

Zuko and Katara take on Azula.

She screams when he jumps in front of the lightning for her, and the sound dies down in her throat but never in her blood, and she's running and hiding and _bending_ as Azula comes after her in a furious rage, and all Katara can do is think that every second she wastes fighting her is a second of Zuko's lifeline running out.

When his eyes flutter open, her eyes involuntarily fill with tears. "Thanks, Katara," he whispers, and it's everything.

She thinks briefly of kissing him then, but she doesn't.

(o)

It ends, as it must, in the Fire Nation palace, a Fire Lord ending a hundred-year-war where his grandfather had started it. Aang seeks her out in the aftermath, all tired eyes and shy smiles. "Hi, Katara."

Her heart overflows with warmth for this boy, this _stupid boy_ who'd waited a hundred years for her and then some, who had changed the world at twelve and showed no signs of stopping, who would love her for his whole life and reincarnate into someone she'd love all the same.

Her throat feels raw. "Hi, Aang."

He leans in and kisses her, and everything falls into place.

Katara decides right then and there that it isn't so bad, and kisses him back.

(o)

It's easy after that.

In the postwar period, meetings between the friends are scant – Sokka gets married, and his wife helps him rebuild the Southern Water Tribe. (Katara had cried at the wedding.) Toph starts a school, Suki returns to Kyoshi Island, Zuko and Mai rule the Fire Nation. Toph has a daughter, then another one. Zuko and Mai have just the one – a beautiful girl who shares their patrician features. Katara gives birth to three children – rambunctious Bumi, cheerful Kya, and serious Tenzin. Aang looks at them, and at her, like they're the most precious things in the world, and it makes blood rush to her heart. Tenzin meets Pema's eye and his timer goes off, and it only adds to her happiness.

She doesn't see much of him in those blissful, peaceful years, both of them overtaken by roles and duties and propriety, but she smiles when she thinks of him.

Aang is there when Sokka passes and she cries until she can't anymore. And then when Aang follows soon after, smiling peacefully and closing eyes that will never open again and she despairs at the zeroes fading from her wrist, Zuko is there at the funeral with her. She's struggling to maintain a strong facade for the public and the other world leaders, but he meets her eye across the room and she knows he is, too.

"He was my best friend," Zuko admits, watching as Aang's ashes are returned to the wind. "I trusted him with my life."

"He did so much in such a short time," she whispers brokenly. "He could have done so much more."

"I thought he'd have more time," Zuko says quietly. She ponders what he means. He takes her hand, a gesture of comfort, and her blood thrums and her heart skips a beat.

This is why, when little Korra is brought to them a few years later, a spitfire prodigy that is everything Aang wasn't, Katara and Zuko just smile at each other.

"It's her," she says, as surely as she'd ever done anything. "This is the Avatar."

(o)

"Have you heard?" Zuko sets his cup of tea down. "Jinora's Initiation ceremony is in a week's time. I don't suppose you'll make an appearance?"

Katara smiles and shakes her head. "There's still a lot to be done here. You know the Southern Water Tribe would collapse without me." It's not really true – she could leave, if she really wished it, but she doesn't say that.

A smile dances around Zuko's lips at that, and he leans forward and warms his tea with a small flame. "And Avatar Korra–"

"I practically raised that girl," Katara brags, smiling. "Taught her waterbending. And look how far she's come now – took down anarchists, founded a new Air Nation – good to know Aang achieved his dream, even in his next life."

"I know," Zuko says, humoring her. "You'll go down in history as the only person to mother _two_ Avatars."

"The same person, practically."

Zuko looks distant. Distantly, she thinks of how she's grown to resemble his father in his twilight, but there's a kind of gentleness to Zuko's angles not present in Ozai's hard lines.

"Yuan for your thoughts, Zuko?"

"Come to Jinora's initiation," he says suddenly, looking her in the eyes. "Then come with me. On my travels." There's a light in his eyes now, one she hasn't seen often since Mai, or Aang, or Izumi. There's still so _much_ to see and learn, stuff you wouldn't believe…" He trails off, looking at her almost pleadingly.

Images flash through Katara's mind – her father's tears, _you can love someone who isn't your soulmate_, the way Pakku's voiced had hitched when he'd asked her if the necklace was Kanna's, the scars along Princess Ursa's wrists, Sokka staring wistfully at the moon, Zuko's lips on hers, her children's laughter, Tenzin bending his first ball of air. Her heart catches in her throat and for a moment, she remembers the children they were, thinking they were so grown-up and ready to conquer the world. _You rise with the moon, I rise with the sun._

"Can't imagine myself leaving the Southern Water Tribe now," she jokes, not missing the way the light in his eyes dies when she says it. She knows she could love this man again if she let herself – it had been too easy the last time. Her breath hitches. "My bones are too used to the cold. I might melt." It isn't their time anymore, the world has left them behind.

Zuko bows his head a little and takes her hand from across the table. She curls their fingers together. "Practical as always, I see," he says, chuckling.

"Till the very end," Katara says. They drink their tea in silence after that.

She follows him to the door when he stands to leave, citing a meeting with Tonraq before his departure for Republic City. She stands in her doorway and takes his hand again, and says, very softly, to cold air – "Sometimes, I wondered if it would be easier if our timers went off for each other."

Zuko's free hand finds its way to the back of his neck, a gesture left over from his youth, and it makes her smile. "As do I." And before she realizes it his arms are around hers, and she hugs him back just as fiercely. He smells of smoke and sunshine, and she breathes it in.

"I wish you all the best, Zuko," she says. Her heart withers a little.

The smile doesn't leave Zuko's lips. "And you, Katara."

He leaves thereafter, the sunlight reflecting off his hair and robes making him look golden. Katara stands at the doorway until his figure disappears from view. She will see him again soon enough – always bits and pieces through the years, a party here, a coronation there, a meeting in the council room – and her heart will betray her and ask her the same question every time, and she will _always_ have the same answer. But she knows it won't be too long when age will watch up with them, and that the sun will keep setting and the moon will keep rising and the world will spin on while they stand still. Young children play in parks and dream of their soulmates and their protégés will go on to have their own students, and Zuko and Katara will be two more names in history textbooks – Fire Lord, wife of Avatar Aang, helped end the Hundred Year War, instrumental in maintaining peace over the next eighty years – and smiles. There are things the students of tomorrow might never know. Katara touches the part of her wrist where her timer had been, and glances up at the sky. _There is time._

"You waited a century for me, Aang – can you wait a bit more?"


End file.
